"Why live in a two bedroom apartment struggling to make ends meet when you can provide a home for yourself and your children," said the 36-year-old home owner.

Now that employment has expanded in the western Inland Empire, it has become feasible for Inland residents to move farther east and north to Victor Valley, the next frontier of housing affordability, and commute back to their jobs.

The transition in Victor Valley is similar to what occurred when the western Inland Empire became a bedroom community for Los Angeles and Orange counties

Culberson is one of thousands of newcomers who in the past three years have created a housing explosion in the Victor Valley cities of Hesperia, Victorville, Adelanto and Apple Valley.

Since 2000 the population of Victor Valley has grown by 66,000 people, or 24 percent, to more than 338,000 residents, the vast majority of whom came from more expensive cities down the Cajon Pass, such as San Bernardino, Rancho Cucamonga and Ontario.

The development has lured retailers like Lowe's, Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond, Starbucks and Barnes and Noble. They are joined by new restaurants and hotels, such as the Marriott Spring Hill Suites that just opened beside Interstate 15 in Hesperia and the Hawthorn Suites and Hilton Garden Suites with a convention center under construction just up the freeway in Victorville.

Wendy Rosales, who will manage the new Hilton, said the hotels are filled with guests waiting for their new homes to be built.

Suburbia is pushing into a region that historically attracted those wanting a rural lifestyle. Tract houses with suburban-size yards and large master planned communities with home-owner association rules are being developed close to neighborhoods of homes on lots of half an acre or larger without sewers, curbs, gutters or paved roads.

Victor Valley's growing resident work force gradually will attract more employers along Interstate 15, if the usual evolution continues. Already distribution centers of companies such as Goodyear, M&M Mars and Wal-Mart have opened in Victorville and Apple Valley.

Victorville is counting on industrial redevelopment of the former George Air Force Base, now the Southern California Logistics Airport, to generate up to 30,000 jobs over the next two decades.

"The base is the jewel of the High Desert. The base is what is going to drive the desert economy long-term more than any other thing up here," said Joseph W. Brady, president of The Bradco Companies, a commercial broker in Victorville.

But for now the San Bernardino Associated Governments finds that 45 percent of Victor Valley workers commute an hour or more a day and that percentage has been increasing.

Affordable housing is a big attraction for the region. The California Association of Realtors, reports that the High Desert is the most affordable region in California, with 33 percent of residents able to buy the median priced house with conventional financing.

But demand for housing is dramatically escalating prices. In May the median price of a resale house in Victor Valley was $272,140, which was almost 39 percent higher than the median price 12 months earlier.

While Victor Valley is still a haven for entry level buyers, it is also getting many second or third time home buyers from the western Inland Empire who want a bigger house than they could afford south of the Cajon Pass or want to downsize for retirement. Still other buyers are selling homes they already own in the valley and moving up.

Culberson, the mother of a 6-year old boy and a master sergeant in the Army National Guard, said the four-bedroom house she and her husband bought for $110,000 in Hesperia over four years has more than doubled in value to about $250,000.

Angela Perry, 42, said she and her husband Vernon are empty nesters who sold their 2,000-square-foot house in Rialto and are living at the Red Roof Inn in Victorville while waiting for a 1,300-square-foot house to be built for them at a new tract in Adelanto.

By moving to Victor Valley, Perry said, the couple was able to pocket cash from the sale of their previous home and still buy a house in a new Adelanto subdivision for $204,000. Some new homes in Rialto start at $450,000, she said.

Four days a week Perry drives 45 minutes to her job as manager of a cable-television station in Rialto, a commute that she figures costs her about $30 a week.

Higher gas prices have not slackened demand for Victor Valley houses. KB Home's Inland Division president Scott Laurie said new homes in Victor Valley are about $150,000 less expensive than those just at the other side of the Cajon Pass.

"Gas prices would have to go up quite a bit to make up the difference," he said.

But home builders say they are having more difficulty building homes affordable to first time buyers even in Victor Valley.

Doug Stewart, president of home building for Victorville-based Frontier Homes, said a year ago he could build a house he could sell for $200,000, but he no longer can because of higher land costs and the longer time it takes to get plans approved by cities struggling with a snowballing workload.

Retail growth and development fees are helping cities finance new roads and expand police and fire services required by the flood of new residents. Annual sales tax revenue in Victorville, which has the most retail development, has grown from $9.5 million in the 2000 fiscal year to an estimated $17 million this year.

"The High Desert is very pro development but it also maintains that development shall pay for itself," said Bill Webb, Victorville's director of planning.

Webb said after the Victor Valley's short-lived construction boom of the 1980s, which ended disastrously with the 1992 closing of the George Air Force Base, some city officials doubted that the real estate resurgence would last.

But Webb said city officials now are confident the new development is well enough entrenched, with supporting schools and services, that in any coming real-estate downturn the population will remain and prevent a rash of foreclosures.

Victor Valley developers aren't slowing down.

The Lewis Cos., an Upland based developer, has plans that include shopping centers in Apple Valley and Hesperia, a 169-acre housing and retail project in Victorville and a 1000-acre master planned community in Adelanto.

"We are real bullish on the area," said Richard Lewis, who does much of the land acquisitions for the family owned company.